Healthy Food and Nutrition

Applications

Shayla Graves

EDUC 1005-2

“Foods provide basic nutrients needed for the body to grow, repair, regulate and maintain itself.” (pg.232)  Giving children their age-appropriate foods can help promote healthy growth and development.  All children should be eating from all 5 food groups.  “MyPlate has been designed to help people meet the nutritional standards set in those guidelines and to make better food choices and cut down on excesses”. (pg.216)

All children should be exposed to age appropriate foods, infants should have iron fortified formulae or breastmilk, and they will soon change their diet and introduce stage one vegetables around six months of age.  Toddlers and preschoolers should eat the recommended amount giving from the MyPlate food system.  With the Myplate system it encourages children to drink water and eat more fiber and less sugar.  School lunches have change tremendously in the last few years we promote more 100% juice and whole wheat products than before to provide children with healthy weight and balanced calories.

Adults should encourage children to eat healthy and a child can only eat what an adult provides.  Advertisement has made this extremely difficult since children our exposed to television and want to try these unhealthy fast food diets.  A lot of parents work late and result to fast foods and some families don’t have the money to eat healthy.  “Cost is always a factor when trying to balance care with the business of caregiving.” (pg290) Parents can help develop healthy eating habits by eating healthy themselves and in return the children will eat healthy too.  Also by trying to mix and new food with a familiar food and they may be more likely to try it.

Some recipes I have tried and it encourage my children to eat healthy and also have fun making were:

1. Banana Wraps- spread peanut butter on tortilla, add granola, place banana and then honey to hold together and roll up and enjoy!!

½ banana

1tsp honey

1tbs granola

1tbs.peanut butter

½ whole wheat tortilla

This is a great snack that my children really enjoy!

2. Ants on a log- spread peanut butter on celery stick and add raisins Simple and the children love it!!

1 Celery stick cut into two pieces

1tbs peanut butter

Raisins

There are lots of fun snacks and meals you can try that our fun to make and healthy!

References

    Safety, Nutrition, and Health in Early Education (5th ed.)

        Chapter 6, "Basic Nutrition in Early Childhood Education Environments" (pp. 212−250)

        Chapter 8, "Providing Good Nutrition for Diverse Children" (pp. 290−330)